Country Club of North Carolina in Pinehurst, NC

The Country Club of North Carolina hired me to develop a brand new practice facility and short game area on the site of their old driving range and employee parking lot. The primary challenge, as always, was space. With less than ten and one-half acres to work with, the design program required a seamless transition between uses in order to maximize the space. The primary task was the expansion of the practice tee space from .8 acre to 2.2 acres. The addition of the old employee lot allowed the driving range portion enough width to be acceptable for a membership over one-thousand and thirty six holes. The addition of an extra acre and one-half south of the old range became the new short-game area.

The club was determined to have at least two acres of tee space, but due to the configuration of the property, it was necessary to place the majority of that tee space on the far side of the site, away from the clubhouse. The extra land for the short game area was also on that end. Therefore, we moved the focal point of the facility to that end, but created a smaller tee close to the clubhouse. We moved 35,000 cubic yards of dirt to transform a flat expanse into dramatic elevation changes between the tees and the driving range fairway. We simply carved material out of the fairway area and used it to build up the tees and the short game area greens and the result is sixteen feet of elevation in places.

The concept behind the new facility was to replicate the playing experience of both the Dogwood and Cardinal courses. The Dogwood was an original collaboration between Willard Byrd and Ellis Maples characterized by high-flashed bunkering. The Cardinal was completely remodeled by Arthur Hills with a slight nod to Seth Raynor (flat sand bunkers). I accomplished this with the targets of the driving range area first. From each side of the facility golfers play to target greens framed by both bunker styles. For ease of maintenance and range ball retrieval, I reduced the size of the bunkers and built them in such a way that balls rolled away from the actual bunker floor as much as possible. The short game area is composed of two target greens on opposite sides. The far green is a composite of the Cardinal greens and the closer green replicates the Dogwood greens. In between is a rambling fairway of high and lows, swales, mounds, and hollows. The result is a playing field of all possibilities found at CCNC.

The seamless transition of the site features comes by way of incorporating additional practice options into grade changes for the practice tee and using the area between the tee, short game area, and indoor training center as practice space. A practice sand bunker is built directly into the far slope of the practice tee. I also created an “Area of Undulation” on the far end of the practice tee. This is practice tee space that is full of highs and lows. The golfer can drop a bucket of balls and practice uphill, downhill, and sidehill shots. The only golf shot a member of The Country Club of North Carolina cannot practice at the state of the art practice facility is a shot over water. Founder of GolfClubAtlas.com, Ran Morrissett, claims that CCNC is the only place in the world where the practice facility outshines the golf courses.